topic Re: NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string might change in a future SAS rel in SAS Programming

NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string might change in a future SAS release

geneshackman — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:33:58 GMT

I get this error. I looked it up on the web and I'm not sure solutions on the web apply to my code

data temptotal;
set tempa tempb;
if county eq "New York State" then delete;
if race = "County Total" and county = "State Total" then delete;
if county eq "State Total" then county_code = 36000;
run;

here is the log

data temptotal;
1074 set tempa tempb;
1075 if county eq "New York State"
-------------------------
49
1075! then delete;
1076 if race = "County Total" and county = "State Total" then delete;
---------------- ----------------------------
49 49
NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string might change in a future SAS release. Inserting white space between a quoted string and the succeeding identifier is recommended.

1077 if county eq "State Total" then county_code = 36000;
1078 run;

running on sas 9.4, on windows.

I don't have any characters after quotes. As far as I can tell, the end of every quoted phrase is followed by a space.

Do i have an error in punctuation?

Re: NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string might change in a future SAS rel

SASKiwi — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 19:55:23 GMT

This is usually caused by an unbalanced quote further up your program. What you have posted is fine. Might be easier just to save the code you've posted, start a new SAS session then run your code again.

Re: NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string might change in a future SAS rel

geneshackman — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 20:16:51 GMT

Thanks, that was it. I closed, and re-opened and re-ran, and it worked fine. I -did- have an earlier error with a quote, but i fixed it before i ran this. Anyway, when i closed this sas session, and re-opened and re-ran, no problem. Thanks again.

Re: NOTE 49-169: The meaning of an identifier after a quoted string might change in a future SAS rel

ballardw — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 20:25:19 GMT

Please do not call this an error. As the log shows it is a NOTE.

The NOTE is saying that something has a character other than a space after a quote at the end of some expression. SAS uses quoted values followed by a letter to indicate special forms of literal values:

'17Jul2022'd <= a date literal value

"12:15:27"t <= a time literal value

"17Jul2022:12:15:27"dt <= a datetime literal value

and when the options Validvarname=ANY then a variable name literal such as 'variable with spaces'n to reference a variable with non-standard naming. Option Validmename=Extend will allow data sets to have non-standard characters such as "ds * spacenames"n.

The Note says that at some time the combination of characters that was found might become a special case such as these literals and the code might change behavior.